New Forest Writer in Residence: A View from the City

Where I contemplate hedges and threads, and what connects the City to the Forest

I’ve been thinking about the hedge in my garden since I moved last year. It’s hard not to. It’s about ten foot tall and about five foot wide, and it takes up most of the garden. As I’d like there to be other things in the garden (mostly plants for wildlife but also things like - places to sit and daylight) I’ve decided that it needs to come down. I’ve needed to wait until the bird-nesting season ends, just in case anyone had made a home in the dense and quite unfriendly-looking dead interior of the hedge - but for most of the spring and summer, I’ve looked at it and dreamed up grand plans of having something more useful in that spot - for me and for wildlife.

If you’ve spoken to me in the last few years, I’ve probably talked to you about hedges. I’ve tried to restrain myself a little bit on this front. The trouble is, they’re just so interesting.

It’s a funny interest for me to have developed, because I’m not usually especially interested in man-made habitat. I like talking about bogs or rivers or wetlands, or the scrubby patches that appear in the city in untended places. I am fond of wild places that are neglected or undervalued.

I think hedges capture my imagination simply because they are so dense. There is so much potential in those narrow lines of habitats. A thin strip of hawthorn and hazel can run alongside a road mostly unnoticed - and play host to a hundred other plants. I’ve seen hedges dense with foxglove and bittersweet and briony; I’ve seen them laden with cow parsley and old man’s beard and garnished with bindweed. Or, I’ve seen them old and thick and gnarled, the last line of defense against a cold wind on a hill farm field. Hedges are a refuge - sometimes the only shelter beside a mono-cultured field, a busy road, a windswept hill.

I think my interest in hedges has probably coincided with moving back to the city. I love the idea that traditional hedges could offer a real injection of biodiversity into urban green spaces - nature reserves and parks of course, but also gardens and schools and campuses.

The first hedge I remember is, funnily enough, in the New Forest. To get to my school bus stop, I had to take a footpath down the hill. It was a thin path between two tall hedges - so tall that the path was more of a tunnel, really - as I don’t remember daylight above me. In the spring, it was completely overgrown with cow parsley that filled the centre of the tunnel. Taller than my head, yes, but growing low down too. It was always impossible not to run down the path (because it sloped down towards the village) but this time of year, it was like running through confetti - arriving at the bottom covered in white cow parsley blossom and greenfly and tiny black beetles and the smell of green stems. Despite going down that path every day, I only really remember it in spring - full of life.

The hedges were not cut during the year and a half I caught the school bus to Junior School. I visited a few years ago to find that the hedges had been laid. The boughs of the overgrown hazel and hawthorn had been cut and bent down and had already started to resprout. This is excellent for the hedge and the habitat - in fact, they were probably never supposed to become so tall that they made a tunnel - but it did leave me with mixed feelings. The cow parsley tunnel was no more.

I have no such mixed feelings about this garden hedge. It is not a wild hedge, it’s conifer - the kind specifically planted to block out the view of neighbouring gardens. I’ve never liked them because they’re aesthetically so blocky and oppressive - but I also dislike that these trees have been squashed into hedges and trimmed and cut and made to conform. I think the hedge in my garden is a Thuja of some kind - White Cedar or Western Red Cedar - (I should probably look a little closer) - which I think is actually a cypress rather than a true cedar (please correct me if I’m confused).

Cypress or Cedar - both are enormous trees. I once saw a Western Red Cedar felled in the Forest - in my memory it was about 80ft at least - and it was right next to a cottage that needed to not be squashed. I think it may have been part of an overgrown hedge, once. These trees want to grow and grow - and has a hedge, they cannot fulfil that potential - or their potential as a home for wildlife, only really serving to house the occasional roosting bird.

By contrast, traditional hedgerows are vitally important for wildlife. According to charity CPRE, over 600 plants, 1,500 insects, 65 birds and 20 mammal species use UK hedgerows. They’re also incredible carbon stores (over 13 million tonnes a year, offsetting 1/3 of UK farming carbon emissions). In the city, hedgerows (including the less-inspiring ones like mine) still do an amazing job of reducing air and noise pollution.

In fact, the Climate Change Committee has recommended that we increase hedgerows by 40% to tackle the climate emergency.

Realistically, I can’t plant and manage a traditional hedge in my garden - for a few reasons. It’s a bit tricky fully removing the old hedge, for a start - but also because there’s no guarantee I’d live here long enough to set up a proper regime for laying the hedge. So, I’m going for a wildlife friendly compromise / experiment.

I’m cutting up the old hedge to make a dead hedge and then I’m going to plant some hazel and hawthorn saplings alongside, which I’ll maybe lay into the hedge if I’m here long enough. I’m trying to ignore the fact that it would be incredibly easy for future owners to rip it all out. Ultimately, I just have to do what I can to make it pleasant for wildlife while I’m here. Actually, making a dead hedge is probably one of the best things I can do - because it will be a refuge and a nest. The native species will be food and shelter for creatures that depend on them.

It’s a start, but what it really emphasises is that individually, it’s hard to ensure any lasting benefit. To get hedgerows to work - we need them to be created on land that will be consistently managed long term. In an urban environment, that means schools and farms and universities - hedges need places to exist, and communities to sustain them.

(So, if you work in those places, you’ll hopefully now understand why I keep going on about them).

That said, this whole garden hedge endeavour has still resulted in the knitting together of several strands of the local community - city and country, old and new, though none of them would know it - which is a very nice thing indeed.

Hazel Poles:

I knew that I needed hazel poles to use as stakes for the dead hedge and after a bit of searching around (it’s really not the right time of year, most hedge layers have used up their stocks) I posted on a Facebook page for Coppicing and Woodland Craft. I didn’t hear anything for a while - but it seems that the mycelial network of hedge-layers was working away in the background, because a little while later a message popped up from a volunteer at Pondhead Conservation Trust (which I’ll write about at a later date, because I’m just as enthusiastic about coppicing for wildlife). Volunteer Mike found me a dozen hazel poles (in the rain) and arranged for me to collect them from Volunteer Steve in Ashurst (also in the rain - the first of the edge-of-the-forest places) - and I explained to him (while trying to fit the six foot poles in my tiny car) how they would be rehomed in the city.

Hazel Saplings:

The hazel saplings came from a friend of Southampton National Park City - so I walked round to collect those (from a friend of a friend, a neighbour of a neighbour). I also have a little sapling as a momento of my time at Southampton City Farm to join the mix.

Chainsaw Gear:

The hedge is very thick. Too thick for a hedge-trimmer. Much to my chagrin, I don’t own my own chainsaw at this stage of my life (despite the number of boaters precariously felling windblown trees on the canals for their firewood, I knew that wasn’t a sensible idea). The electric chainsaw was lent to me by Anneka and Jim over in Hythe (another edge-of-the-forest place). My trousers and boots are old work gear (because new staff need new PPE, so I got to keep them) - from another edge-of-the-forest place. Helmet and gloves were lent by Mac at Sholing Valleys Study Centre (another wonderful urban wildlife spot - also keen on hedges).

And of course, Anneka helped with cutting the whole lot down - and I’ve already asked around to see if anyone can help with the next stage of hedge knitting - all while the neighbours look on, with no idea that this whole magical project is taking place.

It currently looks like a tornado has passed through the garden; and it probably won’t look like much when it’s done either. But it’s a nice story, one that’s got me thinking about all types of knitting together of people and landscapes and habitats - most of all, how cities and countryside aren’t as separate as I often feel they are. It’s incredibly easy to feel split between the two worlds - working in the countryside and feeling the drag of coming back to a very urban flat; or living in the city and feeling completely cut off from the Forest. I’m especially prone to feeling this divide if I spend the day with someone who lives entirely in one sphere or the other - wondering if they can ever really understand the other way of living.

City folks go out to the countryside for recreation*; country folk come into the city for the same - that’s not news to anyone. On a superficial level, maybe that’s the knitting together of communities. But I think there’s something else happening here - something that’s on the level of shared resources and knowledge. Buying the hazel poles from Pondhead and telling the story of how I was going to use them in the city - that was part of it. On the same afternoon, I walked round the city cemetery to look for spiders with friends - and took home some chicken of the woods - that felt part of it, too.

I expect that throughout this year, I’ll write a lot more about my own experience of living on the edges of the Forest - both physically (separated by a big fast road) and socially (separated by not being from the Forest, among other things). I’m really, really interested in these margins.

But thinking about this hedge - and the links with the countryside and rural living - the margins are becoming blurred. The hems are fraying and being restitched. There seems to be all sorts of potential for re-entwining the habitats I thought were separate.

Hopefully, the hedge will actually become something. Or at least look tidy, and have some plants growing in it. I’ll keep you posted.

(Marsh Pennywort at Deerleap)

*I stopped at Deerleap Car Park on my way home from Ashurst. I’m not sure I have ever been there of my own accord, but I think it’s the car park of choice for city dwellers as it’s so close to the road out of town. There was litter. There were dozens of cars. It made me feel uneasy. Of course, I wandered off the main path to look at the alder carr at the bottom of the slope. I don’t approve of going off the main path, it’s bad for the habitat.

In Other News:

I popped to say hello to the New Forest National Park offices a couple of weeks ago, and FINALLY got a chance to visit The Imaginarium - who are even more brilliant than I thought they would be. A cosy and brilliantly curated Sci-Fi and Fantasy Bookshop (with a great children’s section, too) that was so so welcoming. Top marks too for feeling like an Inclusive space for All.

I’m going to be at Butser Bookfest this October, talking about Writing for Children. It’s their first ever book festival and there’s an incredible line up of writers and storytellers - all with an interest in nature and history - so do come along!

A Ship in the Dark is being translated into German as we speak. Thienemann Esslinger did the most beautiful edition of The Map of Leaves so I’m so excited to see how this one turns out.